Nature
grrlscientist | September 24, 2008tags: Baile Tughaidh, Blackhouse Village, ancient human dwellings, Gearranan Scotland, Isle of Lewis Scotland, Image of the Day
Baile Tughaidh.
Blackhouse village at Gearranan (Isle of Lewis, Scotland). These thatched-roof, drystone walled houses were still inhabited until 1976.
Image: Dave Rintoul, Summer 2008 [larger view].
On the exposed Atlantic coast of the Isle of Lewis, the blackhouse village of Gearrannan lies steeped in history and sited in an environment of outstanding natural beauty. Since 1989 the local community trust Urras nan Gearrannan (the Garenin Trust) has been…
awild | September 15, 2008Martialis heureka Rabeling & Verhaagh 2008
drawing by the inimitable Barrett Klein for PNAS
Most scientific discoveries these days emerge through carefully planned and controlled research programs. Every now and again, though, something unexpected just pops up in a distant tropical jungle. Martialis heureka is a fantastic discovery of that old-fashioned kind. This little ant simply walked up to myrmecologist Christian Rabeling in the Brazilian Amazon. It is not only a new species, but an entirely different sort of ant than anything known before.
The remarkable find was…
awild | September 14, 2008
Camponotus castaneus
Champaign, Illinois
I photographed this ant's nest yesterday afternoon. A couple hundred large, orange ants with piles of silken cocoons under a board in the park next to our house. I feel vaguely guilty about this now, as the soggy remains of Hurricane Ike are blowing through town this morning and everything is underwater. If I disturbed the structure of their nest too much, the ants might not have had time to repair their water-proofing. I suppose I should check in on them again once the weather improves.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a…
awild | September 12, 2008
Prionocyphon Marsh Beetle (Scirtidae)
New York
Scirtidae is a small family of mostly small beetles found in wet, swampy habitats all over the world. Taxonomists find them to be difficult creatures, the larvae are archaic in appearance but the adults share some similarities with the elateriforms- click beetles, fireflies, and the like. Recent research based on ribosomal DNA sequences showed why their evolutionary relationships have been so hard to peg. Rather than fitting neatly inside one of the 4 beetle suborders, these insects are surprisingly old, diverging from the lineage that led…
grrlscientist | September 11, 2008tags: Sandwalk, Darwin's Down House, nature, photography, London, England, Bromley, England
Light Shining into a Tangled Bank.
A view through a thicket of trees as seen from the Sandwalk near Darwin's Down House in Bromley, England.
Image: GrrlScientist 31 August 2008 [larger view].
The last paragraph in Darwin's On The Origin of Species;
It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately…
awild | September 9, 2008All the better to steal your brood with, my little red riding ant...
Polyergus
Champaign, Illinois
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon D60
ISO 100, f/13, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | August 28, 2008
A perpetually happy Venezuelan Leptogenys
We don't really know why some species of Leptogenys hunting ants sport a permanent grin. The oddly ecstatic mandible shape might, however, have something to do with handling the broadly curved exoskeleton of their preferred prey: isopods (the sow bugs and pill bugs).
Flickr user "venwu225" recently uploaded a fantastic series of the related species L. falcigera in action. Some of the shots show how the mandibles allow the ant to grip the isopod both above and below its wide skirt of armor. Cool stuff.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro…
awild | August 22, 2008
Ochthebius sp. Minute Moss Beetles (Hydraenidae)
Pyramid Lake, Nevada
Tiny flea like specks
Move among the algal slime.
Oh! Hydraenidae!
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon D60
ISO 100, f/13, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | August 21, 2008
On my recent visit to the coastal forests of Kwazulu-Natal I noticed basketball-like growths on many of the Acacia trees. In North America, any large gray ball you see hanging off a tree branch is liable to be a hornet's nest. In South America, it's probably a carton nest of fierce little Azteca ants. The equivalent in South Africa? I didn't know.
A little bit of poking around in the acacias revealed the culprit. It was Crematogaster tricolor, an orange ant about half a centimeter long:
They didn't appreciate the disturbance, apparently, because they came after me without…
awild | August 15, 2008
Pelidnota punctata - Grapevine Beetle
Champaign, Illinois
Here it is: the first insect I've photographed since moving to Illinois last week. I've been posting a lot of scarab beetles recently, but can you blame me? They're so pretty.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/11, 1/200 sec, indirect strobe in white box.
awild | August 12, 2008
This shot wasn't too difficult. The ant was following my finger about menacingly, as seen here, so I only needed to lift my hand just above the viewing frame to get her to pose.
awild | August 8, 2008
Cicindela lemniscata - White-Lined Tiger Beetle
Arizona, USA
This one is for Ted, who has an excellent blog about Tiger Beetles.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper.
awild | August 6, 2008
Euprenolepis procera
(photo by Witte and Maschwitz)
This is cool. A new paper by Volker Witte and Ulrich Maschwitz details a previously unknown behavior for ants: nomadic fungivory. Here's the cite and the abstract:
Witte, V. and U. Maschwitz. 2008. Mushroom harvesting ants in the topical rain forest. Naturwissenschaften, online early.
Abstract: Ants belong to the most important groups of arthropods, inhabiting and commonly dominating most terrestrial habitats, especially tropical rainforests. Their highly collective behavior enables exploitation of various resources and is viewed as a key…
awild | August 1, 2008
Strategus aloeus - Ox Beetles, female (left) and male
Arizona, USA
Impressive pronotal horns mark the male in these sexually dimorphic scarabs. Strategus aloeus is found in the southern United States from Florida to Arizona.
photo details, top photo: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/9, 1/200sec, ISO 100, indirect strobe in a white box
bottom photo: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/14, 1/200sec, ISO 200, indirect strobe in a white box
awild | July 31, 2008
Harpegnathos saltator - Jumping Ant
I thought I would have to travel all the way to India (the horror!) to photograph one of the world's most charming insects, the jumping ant Harpegnathos saltator. But I recently learned that myrmecologist Juergen Liebig, a professor at Arizona State University, maintains dozens of captive colonies in his lab in Phoenix. Juergen studies these ants' rather unusual behavior. Unlike most ants that show a clear division between reproductive queens and sterile workers, Harpegnathos workers can mate and produce fertile offspring, leading to soap opera-style…
grrlscientist | July 30, 2008tags: flamingos, baboons, nature, streaming video
This streaming National Geographic video shows a group of hungry baboons in Kenya's Lake Bogoria that find themselves surrounded by a million unsuspecting, and unprotected, flamingos. I am sure you can guess what happens next. [2:40]
grrlscientist | July 27, 2008tags: Black-Bellied Plover, Pluvialis squatarola, birds, nature, Image of the Day
Black-Bellied Plover, Pluvialis squatarola, at Bolivar Flats, Texas.
This bird is in breeding plumage, more correctly known as "alternate plumage."
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 6 June 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1600s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.
awild | July 25, 2008
Cotinus mutabilis - Fig Beetle
Tucson, Arizona
A few weeks ago we started noticing these giant green scarabs flying about Tucson. They're about the same size and clumsiness in the air as carpenter bees, but brilliant green in color. My wife- a bit of a bug geek herself- was given a few for her birthday last year by one of her customers at the market where she works.
If you ever encounter a fig beetle larva, be prepared for something truly weird. They ignore the fact that they have legs and walk upside-down, lying on their backs, their little legs pointed up.
photo details, top photo:…
grrlscientist | July 22, 2008tags: Snowy Plover, Charadrius alexandrinus, birds, nature, Image of the Day
Snowy Plover, Charadrius alexandrinus, at Galveston, East Beach, Texas.
Image: Joseph Kennedy, 15 July 2008 [larger view].
Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope with TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/320s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400.